Chapter 4: Repentance

Once a month he made the drive to visit his parents. Usually on a Sunday. His mother liked him to go to church with her, so he rose before dawn. He stood in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee, looking out the window and wondering how far Mr. Smallwood had progressed.

Chapter 4: Repentance
Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

Once a month he made the drive to visit his parents. Usually on a Sunday. His mother liked him to go to church with her, so he rose before dawn. He stood in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee, looking out the window and wondering how far Mr. Smallwood had progressed. For the last year he did the morning chores when Jack was off and he did them much slower, and for the rest of the week he complained about how his body could not do it all. It made him angry not to do the work himself, and Jack knew that he resented him at times as a reminder of how his body had become feeble. It was his farm and Jack was not even his son. A remark that was made several times during the first months, usually under his breath, but since then his outrage had faded into a silent brooding acceptance of his own age and Jack's necessity.

He decided to drive the back way to his parent's house. It was faster to drive down through Atlanta, but he did not feel like seeing the city. The road out of Rome, Highway 411, was long with nothing but intersecting roads, most of them dirt, and all of them named after people, farms, or geographic landmarks that undoubtedly led only to that for which they were named. The rest held little more than strip malls and sprawling neighborhoods that cut into the landscape like military compounds, but on a pretty day, and early in the morning, it was a nicer drive.

When he entered the house, they were sitting in the kitchen engaged in a conversation with the dogs. It was hard to imagine them without dogs, and especially any breed not capable of conversation. For this reason, any dog who entered the house was lap sized for parlor sit downs. It was this environment that made him sure he could never live with a dog. The idea of talking that much was exhausting.

His mother rose from her chair announcing to the dogs that he had arrived. She gave him a hug and said that she was going to finish getting ready and left the room with the dogs in procession.

"Jack, get some coffee," his father said smiling as he watched the dogs tread a path to the back bedroom. If his father's veins were opened black coffee with hazelnut platelets would flow freely. No matter the time-of-day coffee would be made and offered. He took a cup from the cabinet and filled it.

"How have you been dad?"

"Fine. Fine."

He rose and opened the door to the deck leaving it open behind him. He already had a cigarette lit and was spitting flakes of tobacco from the tip of his tongue when Jack joined him.

"How was the drive?"

"It was nice. Long."

"Yeah. It's pretty out though."

He took in the sky as proof of his judgment and then looked Jack over, smiling.

"Your mom's about ready. Did you Eat?"

"No. I'm not really hungry. I can wait until after church."

His father's eyes narrowed as if attempting to focus on something distant. Jack knew what he was looking at. He took Jack's hand and held it in the light, looking at the bruising. He held back a flinch at his father's rough grasp. The swelling had left but the bones felt raw beneath the dark purple of his skin.

"I know."

"What are you going to tell your mother?"

"That I got it pinched in a gate at work."

His father snickered and took a contemplative draw on his cigarette. He let go of his hand with a shake of his head.

"Is that it? Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"No. It's just the hand."

"Are you in trouble? It looks a little one sided."

"I doubt there's anyone looking for me."

His father grinned and tossed his cigarette away. He put his arm around his shoulder and walked him back into the house.

"All right. A fence."

By the time they reached the church a story had been told, much embellished, about a horse protecting her baby and a feeding gone wrong in a foaling shed. Both were laughing. His father knowingly and his mother amused.

The church was of the newer type built like a warehouse. A big box store for mass produced platitudes and watered-down dogma. Metal chairs with red cushions and elastic pockets on the back like map holders on car seats. The walls were windowless and bare except for the illuminated exit signs in rough metal casings like a factory or loading dock. A sound booth in the rear of the expanse controlled a large screen projector that hung twenty feet below the roof and displayed bible passages and song lyrics on the immense blank space behind the stage. On the stage stood a podium in the shape of a cross with a brass reading lamp and a stand for the choir. The concrete floor echoed with every step and it was necessary to stand sideways in any location so that people could squeeze past.

They were met with handshakes and hugs and introductions were made to smiling faces who repeated his name as if for memory, but he knew he had met them before, and they had done the same. His mother always took the lead in conversations, and it was possible to ignore what was said for large periods of time before he would have to smile and nod in agreement to some banal observation. When they sat his mother patted his knee and nestled into her chair excited to have him near.

The service progressed through alternating calls to sit and stand marked by music and readings. When it was time to sing, lyrics were projected in huge black letters on the wall over backgrounds of rivers or ocean expanses with rainbows and copyright notices at the bottom. Around him people stood with hands raised in the air and sang along, swaying slightly to the music of the small band and the amplified performance of the choir that reassured them they would not be heard if they sang along. Jack did not sing but stood and watched with curiosity. The urge to raise his hands had never struck him, and even when he was more religious, he viewed the services with a detached appreciation for the pageantry more than with any degree of fervor. His connection to God was a silent one and he never believed that He desired more. All that needed to be said was heard before it was spoken, and judgment was already passed so he felt no need to disturb Him with bargaining or praise. It was foolish to raise the ire of a king when the punishment was yet to be meted.

He saw a man dance in the aisle once with eyes closed and arms raised. His long hair pulled back in a ponytail. His face contorted and his body shook, and within the man Jack saw sadness. A life had passed him by that was not the life he desired and dancing with eyes closed was his only recourse to an existence that offered nothing but disappointment. Catharsis delivered in the form of music and praise was his only salvation and it was offered in desperation to a God that was not watching. He had no use for this type of religion. God was beyond amusement and all the pleading would not change the course of a story already written.

When the pastor began his sermon, everyone sat and many opened bibles on their laps. The sermons were a matter of academic fascination that Jack admired as much for the oratory as the analysis. He listened for the modulation of speed, the change of pitch, the way the preacher moved, his word choice. He began quietly but by the middle of the sermon his voice was searching and high, cracking as he pushed forward out of breath, and hands that searched the air before him for the tangible presence of that which he spoke. Men rose to their feet and shouts of exultation volleyed from the walls. He thought of standing before a class and delivering a lecture. The years he spent tuning his voice and studying his own cadence until each lesson was refined and perfect in its presentation. The verbal masturbation that made any message engaging and believable. He never had the chance to make people sing and cry. Envy.

The service ended with another song and when it was finished, they filed through the metal double doors and through the same smiling faces and handshakes to the parking lot and got in the car.

"How did you like church?"

This was always his mother's question. He knew that she was secretly hoping he would say it affected him and changed his heart. It was not so much because she desired that he be religious as that she wanted him to be happy and believed that God could do this if he would only let Him. He loved her for this.

"Well, there weren't any snakes."

This was always his answer.

In college, he heard from a sociology professor that there was a snake handling church near town. This was a revelation no less shocking than hearing that a dragon had been spotted. He was sure that both had been vanquished by moving pictures and science. Even in the South such a thing is received with a scoff. He decided that he would find this church and hold a snake. It became a nagging obsession as if doing so would place him in a tale older than his time and allow him knowledge of things that were lost and soon would never be again.

A friend finally got an address from a local and agreed to go with him. On the drive Jack worked through the process of making a tourniquet of his belt and gauging how long it would take to get back to the hospital.

The road that led to the church seemed forgotten, and weeds grew up through the gravel like a layer of moss at the bottom of a stream. Large yellow pines crowded the turns and hung out over the car as they passed concealing the next section of road that when revealed was identical. It was only when the road faded into a patch of weeds that marked not its termination but the end of the section still in use that he saw the church. Had their progress not been halted, the church would not have been noticed at all.

A small hill rose to the right of the road and resting atop was a primitive building made of untreated boards that resembled a roadside barbecue shack complete with a woodshed attached at the rear. They pulled to the back and parked alongside a few other cars that could have been there for years. They sat looking at the church in hesitant silence.

The slatted walls were gray with age and covered with lichen, and the entrance was half hidden under the overhang of a rickety porch. Tall weeds with bright purple blooms grew up along the foundation and kudzu vines crawled out from the surrounding woods and threatened to overtake the complex entirely. Rebecca, who had come fully expecting him to make a spectacle of himself and most likely be bitten, peered forward vacantly and no longer smiled.

She looked at him and asked if he still wanted to go, hoping that he had changed his mind as much for his sake as for her own. When he grinned and exited the car she considered staying behind before she followed.

He opened the door of the church and stood allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The room was cool and musty, and his chest clenched from the dust in the air. They walked forward on the plank floor that creaked under the weight of each step between the rows of ancient pews. People were seated in small groups sporadically around the room and only a few took notice of them as they sat down in the last row. They did not speak.

At the end of the room a stage had been constructed of pine boards and four men worked at unpacking guitars and microphones that were plugged into small black amplifiers and propped alongside metal folding chairs. A fifth man assembled a drum set. A podium, oblong and simple, and made of the same unfinished pine was at the center.

In front of them sat a woman with a child. She wore a faded blue dress with yellow flowers somehow more faded. The child was older but special, and she stroked his head and pressed his hair back, which was shiny and black as if prepared with oil. His body rocked back and forth silently.

After a time, a man appeared from a back door and walked to the podium. The congregation stood without instruction and began to sing. There were no song books or bibles. The men who had been setting up the instruments moved to the front and took seats on the metal chairs readying their equipment. In the background could be heard an electrical hum as the amplifiers warmed. When the singing stopped the men began to play a song that had no words, and everyone remained standing.

The music was loud, and each instrument followed a time and rhythm of its own so that a chaotic din of sounds rose and fell without agreement or purpose. The women began to dance and turn in circles with eyes closed, and the men moved about the room as if looking for something hidden within the grain of the wooden floor.

These men wore long sleeve shirts buttoned to the top in spite of the heat outside and their ruddy faces were worn from the sun and dark. A few wore shirts with opalescent buttons that shimmered faintly in the pale light of exposed bulbs.

Rebecca occasionally glanced behind with quick jerks like she had been touched to make sure that no one was there.

Almost an hour passed, and the music had not stopped. Two circles had formed at the front, and within each a woman danced. One woman shrieked and cried in convulsive fits that tore through her body and the men grabbed her by the arms and held her so that she would not collapse. The other woman spun in place with huge eyes fixed on nothing and tears ran down her neck. Her dress was shapeless and whirled around her body. Those who formed the circle moved their mouths, but their sounds could not be heard above the music.

Jack began to think there would be no snakes. It occurred to him that the snakes might not be offered at every service the way some churches ration communion. Disappointment filled him and he looked at Rebecca to see if she had reached the same conclusion. Her expression betrayed nothing but a bored and uncomfortable disbelief.

A woman stood alone pounding her palms against the wall and then went to her knees.

They were about to leave when two long rectangular boxes were removed from inside the podium. The boxes were yellow pine with hinged tops and large circular holes covered with chicken wire. The man placed the boxes on the podium and opened one, removing a snake. He held it before him and offered it to another. The man took the snake and shuffled around the stage in tears.

Jack expected more pageantry. The music to stop, awed faces to turn toward the box, the snake to be held aloft like a burning staff. Trumpets, angels, a burst of light. Something.

He looked at Rebecca who was now quite alert and already watching him to see what he would do. He smiled and slid past her to the end of the aisle.

He moved toward the stage one pew at a time making eye contact with a few very old women who had remained in their seats. Their withered faces studied him as if he had been expected to act all along and seemed to encourage him forward with looks of impatience at his tentative pace. When he neared the stage, standing among the screaming women in rapture, the guitar player motioned him forward with one hand, smiling. He climbed on stage and looked out over the dancing and writhing below him as one freed from a battlefield and viewing the totality of the engagement.

Several more snakes were pulled from the box and handed out to men who moved about with their venomous props. Jack raised and lowered his leg to the music and mouthed words to feign song hoping that it might gain him a snake. The people in the crowd took no notice, but the musicians smiled and nodded, perhaps persuaded by his feigned spiritual ecstasy. One of them handed him a harmonica and a microphone and then moved off into the crowd and began to dance. He assumed he was to hold them, but his arm was pushed to his face by a man who smiled with dark teeth and raised his hands as if in an offering. For the next several minutes Jack sang mutely into the microphone before he found the switch and turned it off. Then he began singing as loudly as he could words that were no more meaningless than those around him. He closed his eyes and spun around.

The preacher stood next to him and held one of the copperheads near his chest, coiling and uncoiling in the space between them. Jack stopped singing and placed the microphone and harmonica on the stand. He reached out and wrapped his fingers around the snake's body, its cold skin alive and twisting over a cylinder of muscle. Its head made a low arc, and he could see its eye, ancient and glassy. All was silent until the man moved back and pulled the snake away with him.

It was then the noise returned, louder and more metallic so that he could almost taste it like pooled copper blood on his tongue. His face was on fire and he was sweating and tired. He walked back into the crowd and toward Rebecca who was smiling and ready to clap at his ridiculous performance. They snuck out the back door and left.

When his mother first heard the story she was upset, but the passing years made it seem more like myth than fact, and in a way she began to appreciate the moral.

When they got home his mother began lunch and his father invited him to his workshop in the basement. Jack imagined every family was the same. The segregated conversations during which each parent holds audience in a separate area of the house. At a certain age mothers see their sons as grown men who are remarkable and beautiful. Boys who grew to realize some gift or identity that is wholly apart from their youthful misdeeds. Fathers see the same boy. Men know the secret other inside that is never more than a day away from burning all that he owns and working as a deckhand on a freighter steaming its way to some country he would need an atlas to identify. These conversations are secret, as much to hide the other in the son as in the father who must speak and relate.

Jack stood in the workshop looking over the tools and wood and imagining his father's hands organizing the tins of nails, and sanding boards alone in this silent retreat. He could see his grandfather doing the same and wondered what visions old age would bring if one day he found himself quietly working shapes into fallen trees.

"I've got it about done."

His father walked across the room and removed a few strips of sandpaper that had been left in a half-finished drawer.

"I still need to finish this one drawer and then put on a coat or two of stain. These dove tails look pretty good though, don't they?"

He tilted the corner into the light so that Jack could see. Jack said that it did. They both stood examining the drawer and sharing affirmations with each new angle.

"So, how's work? The weather's been nice I bet."

"Yeah, it's been really nice. One of the mares just had a baby."

"Oh, yeah? I bet that's cute."

That was the end of this conversation. His father knew as much about horses as he did, which was nothing. Jack thought about telling him how beautiful it was in the morning, or how much he enjoyed the way the stables smelled as the sun began to warm the old timbers on the roof and mixed with the scent of manure and earth, but he didn't.

"How's Bobby?"

"He's really good. He wanted to come this morning when he heard you'd be here, but he has a case coming up this week and had to go to the office for a few hours."

When he looked up again his father was watching him, looking at his hand. He knew the real question was coming and tried to decide quickly if was going to tell the truth. His father inhaled deeply and cocked his mouth to one side in a way that showed disapproval, but not too much. He held old fashioned beliefs when it came to fighting. He knew that sometimes you had to fight, but that you weren't supposed to.

"What was the fight over?"

"Some redneck shoved me in a restaurant."

His father took out a cigarette and leaned against the counter nodding his head.

"Why did he shove you?"

"He said I was looking at his daughter."

"Yeah?"

He took a drag on the cigarette and fixed his eyes on him waiting for the rest.

"I don't know." Jack looked down at the table and focused on a drill bit. "It pissed me off, so I followed him to the parking lot and hit him."

"Did he hit back?"

This was another old fashion rule. If both men got hit then there was no fault, but the fact that he had no other bruises made his position a little more dubious.

"I don't think he was expecting it. I just hit him as soon as I got near him."

His father nodded. According to the rules this was not a cheap shot because he had been shoved. The guy should have expected it.

"Was it just the one?"

"No." Jack paused and pursed his lips. "I hit him a few more times. Kicked him once I think."

"The cops didn't show up?"

"No. I left pretty quick after that."

His father pushed away from the counter and picked up some sandpaper handing it to him and motioning to the drawer. He started to sand one of the corners and his father went to the shelf for a can of stain and a bag of rags. This satisfied the case, and the conversation was over. The rules had been followed and no police were involved. There had been times in his life when neither was the case, but his father's reaction was not much changed during those discussions except more decisions had to be made afterwards. There was a stoic safety in this. Even if he killed a man his father would only be concerned with how to hide the body or get him to Mexico. This was the father his mother did not know.

"What's Bobby's case about?"

They were both at work on their different tasks, neither looking at each other.

"I'm not really sure. You know your brother. Have you given any more thought to law school? He was telling me yesterday that he knows some people down at State and that he might be able to pull some strings. You already took the test. He said your score was good enough."

He heard the dogs scuffling around above him and his mother's voice.

"No. Not really."

He held the drawer out for his father to inspect hoping that it would change the subject. He pointed to a spot and told him to work on it a little more.

"Well, are you going back to teaching then?"

It was impossible for anyone to understand why he was not doing more with his life. When he quit and moved to Rome, he told everyone that he needed some time to think and make a plan. It was almost the truth when he said it, and for a while it had been a good enough answer, but now a plan was expected. Jack thought about telling him that he might try and be a writer, but to his father being a writer was even dumber than wanting to keep shoveling horse shit. His father knew that at least a man got paid for shoveling horse shit.

"Teachings a stable job. You made okay money. A lot more than what you're making now, I'm sure."

Jack didn't respond. His father was right. If it were a quality-of-life argument he had lost. There was no retirement plan or medical insurance at the barn. He was right, but he didn't understand.

"Why don't you go and talk to one of your old professors? You're right there at the college and they all liked you. Maybe they could help you think of something."

"That's a good idea. I might do that."

He looked up and nodded. Jack could see he was skeptical of the answer but he let it go. That would be enough for this month.

His father studied the board he had been working on. The smell of the stain was warm like burnt alcohol and tar.

"Yeah. That will look nice. What do you think?"

Jack looked at the wood glistening slightly under the fresh coat.

"It's a nice color. It looks stately."

They both sat for a minute in quiet contemplation of the color as his father turned it in the light like a jeweler.

After lunch they sat in the living room and discussed television shows and politics. A few details of the extended family were reported. Everyone says hello, wants to know how you're doing. Your cousin is getting married. Your grandmother has a cold, or the flu, or both. The dogs reclined on the couch turning their heads to each speaker in turn.

When he left his mother told him to be careful at work. His father just told him to be careful.

On the way home he tried not to think of how his parents saw him. They were upset when he quit his job. He sold a nice house they helped him buy so he could live in a trailer. He drank too much. He got in fights. He shoveled horse shit for a living. His brother was a lawyer with a wife and two children. To them he was transparent. They saw the tear at the seams and were going easy on him. Fires, freighters, foreign countries. The thought of being so pathetic made him angry.